People of this country are not to be “run over” - and in their protests do not seek to “run over” anyone, regardless of the opinion of the current occupant of the Oval Office. Our People should be able peacefully to exercise their First Amendment rights without fear of reprisal by anyone.

Our Governor and the Mayor in each of our cities need to:

1) meet immediately with leaders of communities that most frequently suffer the effects of police violence;

2) address - and address now - the causes of these most recent injustices to our People;

3) make sure citizens are placed on boards to review and act upon complaints of police violence;

4) de-militarize our police to make law enforcement appear - and act - less as a force of occupation than as members of our communities charged with keeping peace equally;

5) establish standards to review applicants to law enforcement agencies to ensure officers fired or disciplined for acts of violence from one community do not simply obtain employment as law enforcement officers in another of our communities;

6) ensure the makeup of our law enforcement agencies excludes as officers those who belong to groups that advocate that any single color or ethnicity or belief or gender or religion is superior in rights to any other; and,

7) root out the white supremacists at the cause of these latest acts of violence.

There can be no peace without justice. There can be no justice without open and frank communication between our political leaders and the leaders of the communities most affected by this violence. There can be no resolution of this violence until we finally acknowledge the racial hatred that still exists in this country.

All People are entitled to due process of law. The recruitment and hiring of competent law enforcement officers who are free of any animus toward others because of appearance or beliefs is critical to any notion of due process of law.

The steps I suggest only are a beginning. Our leaders need to act, but not as if this is a war and our People are on the side of the enemy.

I’m Mark Small, GOP candidate for INCD5. I’m pro-environment, pro-choice, pro-civil rights and anti-trump. I believe in the traditional values of the GOP, not the bastardized values we see now. The Republican Party was started to fight slavery - the most insidious and evil manifestation of racism, not to act as a tool to promote racism. I approve of this blog. Hell, I wrote it.